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The Public Square

If you wanted to start a delivery service, you would need vehicles of some sort to make your deliveries. You would need to hire drivers and people to help figure out the logistics of delivering whatever it is you intend to deliver. The other thing you would need is permits to operate your delivery vehicles on the road. The reason for that is the roads belong to the public. The job of the state is to maintain the roads and part of that is regulating how the roads are used. That means you have to obey the rules in order to use the roads.

This may seem obvious, but it is not something that was always obvious. For most of human history, the concept of a “public good” did not exist. In a feudal economy, everything belongs to the king or lord. The common grazing lands would be used by everyone, but they belonged to the king and so did the animals. The military, which defended the king’s lands, was the king’s army, because it was explicitly for the use of the king to defend his possessions. In feudalism, there were no public goods.

Under communism, in theory at least, everything is a public good. The people own the land and the capital that is accumulated through labor. In reality this is a fiction, of course, as it is the state that owns everything. The party controls the state and those who control the party essentially own everything. This is not a lot different from feudalism, except that the guy in charge is not the leader of “his people” in the ethnic sense. Otherwise, all goods, excludable and nonexcludable are held by whoever runs the party.

It is only in participatory government where we have to think about public goods. Things like parks, highways, seaports, rivers, the military and even the air are considered public goods. How these are used and regulated is determined by the people’s representatives in government. All of us get the benefit of these things so all of us have a say in how they are regulated. It’s why a city has to issue permits for parades and protests, when the participants are unpopular. Even the ugly and annoying get to use public goods.

The concept of public goods, like the concept of participatory government, did not spring from nothing. It evolved over time as people worked through how to conserve and manage things like natural resources. The American national park system was created because it solved the problem of managing the great natural wonders of the country. The government manages fisheries, because we slowly figured out, due to over fishing, that even the coastal waterways are public goods and must managed as such.

This notion of public goods is what drives the idea of universal suffrage. The government itself is seen as a public good. The military does not just protect property holders or natives. The police don’t just patrol the streets of land owning white males. If all of us are going to get use of the government, good and ill, then all of us should have some say in how the government runs, within reasonable limits. We bar criminals from voting, for the same reason we ban the insane from voting. These are exceptions that prove the rule.

This link between democracy and public goods is important to keep in mind when thinking about the on-going efforts by Progressives to shut-off dissent from the Internet. Like trucking companies, outfits like YouTube could not exist without the information super highway, owned by all of us. It’s why these big content providers fight to prevent the ISP’s from throttling their content. If Comcast can block NetFlix from its networks, Comcast can suddenly operate like a protection racket, stripping these services of their profits.

Now, it is not unreasonable to demand companies like YouTube pay some special tax for their use of the Internet. They use this resource way out of proportion than anyone else, so a special use tax is a way to address it. Trucking companies pay special use taxes, because heavy trucks are more damaging to the road than your car. Similarly, parade organizers are often charged for police details and other security measures, because these are above and beyond normal use of the streets.

Like the parade route or the public park, there is an overriding issue and that is these public goods are intertwined with our democratic form of government. Controlling access to the park for a rally, is no different than controlling access to the public square for a political speech or access to the ballot for a political party. Even if a public park is managed by a private operator, a common thing these days, the rules governing this public good still apply. Regardless who who cuts the grass, the park is ours.

That’s what needs to apply to these large social media companies. Like it or not, the internet is now the public square. These services like Twitter and YouTube only exist because the public square exists and the concept of the public good exists. If Twitter goes away tomorrow, the internet still exists. If the internet goes away tomorrow, all of the social media platforms go with it. In this regard, they are no different from a vendor operating in a public park. They must abide by the same rules as the public.

As far as the argument that these are private companies goes, well, that is true, but again, they cannot exist without this commonly held thing called the internet. If FaceBorg had to build out its own infrastructure to deliver cat videos and virility ads to your grandmother, it would have to charge granny millions for the service. In other words, these services benefit from this public utility we call the internet, the trade-off for them, like a public broadcaster, is they have to adhere to the rules the public sets for regulating that utility.

The rules we apply to holding rallies in public parks, holding parades on public streets and issuing permits for conducting commerce on public thoroughfares need to be applied to businesses that operate on-line. If Twitter wants to charge users like a private club, then they can impose ideological rules. If they want to operate as a public square, then they must operate like one. This is the California model that is now going to be used in a lawsuit against Twitter. It needs to be the model nationally so we can have a public square back.

Social media is a primary tool of mass indoctrination and mindset manipulation. It is also insidious, highly effective, and operates below the level of acute perception for most people. It’s a bit like becoming an alcoholic slowly over a long period of years. One day you may wake up and find that you are not the person you thought you were. Danger to person used to be individual, obvious, and in your face. Now it’s far more sinister and systemic.

We are somewhat right now in the chaotic period of a transition period in a revolution. Much like the Industrial Revolution was very chaotic for the people caught in it during the transition period (think of the Luddites, farmers moving to the budding industrial towns, children put in orphanages, etc.), we are caught in the same chaos. The previous assumptions about free speech were implicitly made based on the economies of scale. Based on the fact that big media conglomerates controlled a large portion of the free speech and that dissenters to an existing order had to rely on independent… Read more »

That’s like saying the electric grid is privately owned. No one would say the power company can stop serving republicans. The reason is we have long understood that the people can contract the development and management of public goods to private firms. The goods remain public.

So you do a really good job at something and provide service to enough people, and at some point that means you lose control over it?

I’m a landlord. In some countries, housing has been defined as a public good. So has farming. Why is it that it is wrong to confiscate South African Whites’ farms, or fix prices, as in Venezuela, but “public good” to tell a fiber transit company, web hoster or ISP who it has to provide its services to?

“So you do a really good job at something and provide service to enough people, and at some point that means you lose control over it?” That’s almost the reasoning behind forcing bakers to make cakes they don’t want to.. The sevice of baking a cake has become a “public good”; therefore you must be forced to bake it. There is already case law that says once a (for example) Country Club gets above a certain number of members, then it’s a public accomodation, and must open its membership to almost anyone. We could make a similar arguement in favor… Read more »

Yes, it most likely does. The closer they edge to monopoly control of the service, the closer they edge to being either nationalized (less likely) or broken up (more likely).

Edison wasn’t out there wiping the floor with his competitors because he wanted to nationalize the electrical grid. And, AT&T operated as a government-tolerated monopoly for 107 years.

Also, as Americans, we should be increasingly concerned about the political activities of these ISPs who are too comfortable bowing to the PRC and other dictatorships to police content inside – and outside – that nation’s physical borders.

I’m not talking about the practical realities of the statement, I’m talking about establishing principles. It is right? Under what circumstances. If someone can’t tell me why in one case government intrusion is right and in another case it’s wrong, then I can’t take their statist impulses seriously, because that sounds just like leftists, to me.

Since the government literally invented the internet, this should be self-evident. The reason we have a billion miles of wire and fiber is the state gave the telco’s special rights to bury this stuff in the ground. Often, they forced private property holders to give these companies access to land for laying cable. If you doubt this, try starting your own cable company and asking the state for the right to start burying lines in your town.

We’re a long way from the original DARPANet in terms of the percentage of public vs. private investment in the internet. But that aside: We don’t regulate the content or distribution of books and magazines that are shipped over public roads and often via the U.S. Postal Service — another public entity. Some magazines are only available to members of private organizations. Some only accept content from people with certain political views. Since the roads and post are public goods, should we not allow products to be shipped unless those products support all viewpoints? If Facebook and Google have to… Read more »

That’s not the standard. That’s never the standard. You can defend yourself without a gun. You can have free speech with newspapers. You can petition the government for redress without assembly. Having a handful of ideologues policing the main exchange of political ideas is a threat to civil society. The orderly way to prevent this is to treat these companies the same way we treat restaurants and hotels. No one is taking anything away from these firms, other than their ability to wreck our political culture.

Good grief, you make terrible arguments. Are you by any chance a woman?
I ask that, as a woman myself…
We could also get into how these companies manage to run on importing labor through government H1B Visas and all the other cushy credits and subsidies they get.
They are NOT *wholly* private companies. They all started with a leg up, (don’t take my word for it, just read what Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the World Wide Web says), and they are still being propped up.
Bust.Them.Up.
Make them sign something akin to Paul Nehlen’s “Shall Not Censor” idea.

Really? You think they’d suffer from it? You think the redneck population would have some big awakening? Facebook has made it abundantly clear that it hates the redneck population, but the rednecks still use Facebook. Convenience >>> principles. This is true for almost everyone. That’s why so many conservatives complain about Facebook on Facebook instead of abandoning the service. The power grid works through network effects just like the big tech companies. You and the other 3 guys in your town that really care about the rebel flag gonna build your own power grid? Or is it more likely you’d… Read more »

If said farmers were deliberately starving citizens on ideological grounds or otherwise engaging in harmful practices and the States action would prevent this from occurring , its fully moral same with housing, Private property is not a trump card in a developed society and stability takes precedence over personal rights . We’ve already had genetically modified organisms used in lethal political attacks (the Chipotle incident a few years ago) and its getting simple enough for midwits Should the public safety require it, heavy regulation and it hasn’t ye is fully moral and is more important than your currently legal home… Read more »

Ironically, it is only governments, as far as I know — certainly in the vast, overwhelming number of cases — that have starved people on ideological grounds. That’s why proposing expanded state power on the grounds of hypotheticals that have never occurred does not seem convincing to me.

You really think nationalizing all the farms is a justified public good just because it’s not done in a racist way? Stealing all those peoples’ property? Not even to mention the long history of the horrors that visit societies that do things like nationalize their agriculture.

I didn’t say it’s a good idea, but you seem determined to miss the point of everything everybody else is saying on this thread so I won’t try to explain it to you.

As far as your redneck awakening fantasy, well like I said, the tech companies have already done the same thing as the hypothetical power company and the rednecks are still using Facebook. Keep dreaming.

Wouldn’t the internet end up controlled by a regulatory agency. What reason is there to think the state actors wouldn’t be like the EPA, or DOJ except with more power. It seems likely this regulatory agency would get populated with former Google executives where bad thinkers can face fines.

I’m not convinced declaring the internet a public good reduces the tech giants control.

The history of everything is the history of someone complaining about the history of everything.

Perfection is never on the table. My preferred solution to the problem of domain registrars colluding to ban certain people is to bring back the iron maiden, but that’s not happening either. Our civic discourse now happens on-line, on dominant platforms like FaceBorg, Google, Twitter, etc. If you want to live as a slave, give a monopoly of opinion to these twats. Otherwise, that monopoly cannot be allowed to exist.

Men are not angels, so there can be no guarantees. Perfection is not the standard. We know, as a matter of experience, that the electric company does not shut the power off to Nazis or Communists, because of politics. The water company does not tell anyone they violated their terms of service because they said bad words on their blog.

Whatever the internet was, whatever moon-eyed libertarians would like it to be, does not matter, because what it is now is the public square. We have a pretty good handle on how to keep the public square open to the public.

You can call your buddy and talk all day and all night and refer to various groups of people with any/all of the slurs that you’d like, 24/7, 365, and the phone company doesn’t shut off your phone.
Do you get it now?

Distribution power companies are fully regulated because:
1. They have too many “right-of-ways” through public and private land to count. The business model would be unworkable without government intervention.

2. They have agreed to be regulated. It’s not a bad deal since there is a guaranteed rate-of-return. It does put a ceiling on profits.

That’s why I opened with the example of the highway system. We use lots of private firms to build and maintain roads, but the roads are a public good. Even so-called private toll roads are treated the same as public roads. That said, the phone companies laid the wire for the internet and they did so as utilities. In most jurisdictions, a cable monopoly was created by the local municipality to lay cable. None of that really matters. What matters is the fact that the internet is now the public square. As it stands, the registrars could take me off… Read more »

Viz; It’s a murkier case than you postulate: Much of that fiber is already owned by public utilities such as AT&T and sublet to various ISP’s or cable companies. Only the so-called ‘last mile’ is privately owned in most cable systems, for example. Plus, almost all fiber runs through public utility owned conduits under the street, along railroad (a public utility) rights of way or is attached to public utility owned poles above the street regardless of ‘ownership’, whatever that means in such circumstances. It’s not like the tech oligarchs built anything from scratch themselves. Just like Uber, et.al. their… Read more »

Some interesting background info: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/special-report/from-at-t-to-fatbeam-top-10-and-more-biggest-providers-fiber-u-s http://www.businessinsider.com/map-long-haul-fiber-optic-cable-network-united-states-2016-3 Of course you’re right about public rights of ways and conduits. But what are the real implications of that? How much power over content is it legitimate for the state to exercise because of shared use of public rights of way? Except as it impacts public safety or criminal law, we don’t really police what people use the roadways for. Paper magazines and newspapers shipped over roads, but that was never justified as reason for content control of magazines. Shared public airways were used as excuses for content regulation, but that seems more and… Read more »

“It’s why a city has to issue permits for parades and permits, when the participants are unpopular. Even the ugly and annoying get to use public goods.” Oh, yeah? Let me take you back to August 11th, 12th, and 13th of 2017, Charlotteseville, VA…I was there when a permit was issued, then revoked last minute, then restored IN FEDERAL COURT, last minute, only to have the governor declare a state of emergency and effectively revoke the permit, all before any speeches were permitted and any violence, past some elbowing, spitting, and yelling, occurred. As Jean Francois Gariepy calls it, “de… Read more »

Just as an aside, some fire departments used to fight fires only in buildings that had paid for fire protection and displayed the plaque attesting to the payments. Our take on things changes over time.

I think of Google and Facebook as on-line gangs with their own gang culture. They have established their digital turf and now police it for their own benefit, just as a gang does in the physical neighborhood. I am all for gang abatement, as long as those applying the abatement don’t act like a gang themselves.

Last i was there, this is how fire service was handled in Arizona. You don’t pay? Your house burns and they protect people who did. This is a dyscivic way to handle fire protection Now understand I’m an authoritarian Right winger, not a Libertarian one. I have zero issue with using the government to get what I want or need so long as it isn’t counterproductive to do so. Government is a tool same as any and its not evil any more than an AR15 or a hammer is Frankly this gap between the minarchist/ muh Constitutional/corporations can do what… Read more »

Z Man; So did our guys give up the ‘market power’ argument used in most anti-trust suits in the past_? Such suits usually result in a lot of cunning obfuscation about what constitutes the market in question and what defines market power. IOW, if the market is defined as ‘internet searches’ Google is in potential trouble but if it’s defined as on-line transactions of all sorts, then likely not. Maybe they decided that their chances were better on a narrower ‘view-point’ discrimination complaint. But on that basis this suit doesn’t break up the tech oligarchs, which is what needs doing.

It is a little more subtle than that. First, Stefan Molyneux made a parallel argument in that if Twitter and Facebook said honestly they would be throwing anyone to the right of McCain off their platforms, few would have gone there in the first place. They use “hate”, “harassment”, but you find threats of violence by the left still up while some discussion of guns of the bell curve gets banned. I can extend that if they said they would heavily curate content (think China), some would have gone there for their G or PG rated version. But initally it… Read more »

tz; Or they got taken over by SJW’s because when they were small upstart market disrupters they lacked the antibodies against the FI (feminist imperative).* To begin with, they failed to understand how The Cloud jobs program works. It started with political pressure from The Cloud. I remember how Silicon Valley saw itself as the epicenter of rugged, libertarian, venture capital individualism during the Reagan-Bush I era. Then in came The Clinton Machine. After erstwhile radical Eric Holder filed a couple of anti-trust suits, particularly the one against Microsoft, the tune changed radically towards social justice. The SEC leaned on… Read more »

Great argument, Z, but bad analogies. Individuals built Twatter and Fecesbook and did it on their own merit and initiative with their own funds. They were not built as public parks or utilities and therefore can’t be treated that way. And unlike the roads where you have a finite amount of space requiring regulations in order that all may use them – the internet is infinite. I don’t have the time of day for Twatter – but I love Gab! The rude and often racist jokes are worth the price of admission alone – never mind the freedom of speech!… Read more »

Look. You are not arguing in good faith. You can’t make the libertarian nonsense fit reality, so you keep trying to muddy the waters. There’s a reason no serious person takes libertarianism seriously. It’s a nonsense religion for unserious people.

Libertarian?!?!? How RUDE!!! Them’s fightin’ words!!!! 🙂 No bad faith here at all – I would love nothing more than to see these censors and scolds at Faceborg fired en masse and horse whipped on their way out. Here’s why your argument breaks down: At some point, we ALL have to use public utilities and services. We have to ride on roads to work, if we get in an accident, we have to use hospitals. Cops, ambulances and possibly the fire dept have to come out and control the accident scene, etc. etc. I don’t have to use Fecesbook. I… Read more »

Facebook just admitted that they keep files on people who are not actually Facebook users. Google tracks all of your on-line usage. You do not have to use them, but they certainly use you, and you are not the customer in the arrangement. If you use a phone, tablet, or desktop for your internet access, Google monitors you. They sell information about you to third parties, without your knowledge, and with no disclosure on who are the buyers of the information about you, or what they might want to do with the information. There are supposed “work-arounds”, but I am… Read more »

I think if you were running for office or rallying people for
a religous or petition type activity you would need fakebook and twitter
just to communicate. Im not well informed enough to know whats at stake
but I recognize killing the signal is discriminitory and limiting
for civic participation in good government.

I find it odd that you think potential government regulation of the contents of your own blog is “muddying the waters” or arguing in bad faith. It’s not even a hypothetical. Try running the ZBlog as a Chinese national within China.

Our government and our citizenry become progressively less supportive of free speech over the past century. We have well-known public intellectuals who look at China as a system to emulate. Trusting the government to decide how businesses police the content on their own platforms is a dangerous and double-edged sword.

To answer your question, even though it is unrelated to the topic and exasperatingly so, this blog is a content provider. I write something every day. I could turn off comments and the blog does not change. Twitter provides no content. It is an exchange mechanism riding on the much larger public square that is the internet. Twitter exists to enhance and supplement the public square. My blog does not.

So what , the minute the left gets enough power they’ll regulate away your ability to express their view anyway. They are totalitarians not honorable foes and deserve no consideration Honestly the Laissez faire/ muh principles approach the Right has been flogging for the last half century or more has brought us this mess as surely as the machinations of the Left I know Vox Day isn’t exactly as popular here as in some quarters but he makes this point just today Those who believe in a path to victory through “the moral high ground” inevitably find themselves outflanked by… Read more »

Voxxie is correct as far as that goes, and so are you, AB. But we do so have to consider morals and ethics. If we start putting all our prisoners to the sword, or lobbing mustard gas our enemies – we had damned well better be prepared for them to do the same to us – and that’s the problem I have with all this. Z argues that the social media providers are public utilities and maybe that’s valid. Vizzini makes the argument that blogs are too and that the argument Z is making has a double edge to it.… Read more »

If your intent is to attack these entities I have no problem with it – I despise their politics and abuses as much as you. To me, that attack is also much more valid given our rules against monopolies, the abuses of same, and the conflicts of interest that go along with them.

Just wait until Google sells your internet usage records to your employer… The sanctity of keeping personal information private was always the norm in this country. The Stasi “spy on your neighbors” thing in East Germany was a huge ongoing breach of that sanctity, over there. Google and Facebook have now silently, and without fanfare, breached our privacy in a big way, and people can’t quite wrap their heads around the implications. In the old days, you could see visions, have personal and private bad habits, or privately let your kinkiness run wild. Your public face and professional behavior allowed… Read more »

In addition to treating these social media platforms like common carriers, what I believe would help is strengthening laws against slander. You shouldn’t be able to call someone a “racist” or a “Nazi” just because you feel like it. Frankly, I don’t understand why there are not more slander lawsuits filed, as Twitter is nothing but a giant slander-fest.

There is no public space called the Internet. There are private networks that use a common protocol, internet protocol, to connect their individual computers and routers, to make a local area network. Then a mess of private networks (not all) exchange data with each other at agreed points (like MAE east in NJ) forming a larger seamless network, the Internet. So if you are on your company network and it is connected to the internet every host on the internet is reachable just like the local printer or file server. Each is reachable by traveling over private leased lines and… Read more »

Libertarianism is suburban white boy astrology. And yeah, that’s an insult to reasonableness of astrologers. Your argument is so delusional and ridiculous, it is hard to believe it was stated by an adult.

i was not really making an argument. I stated what I think are facts about computer networking and the nature of the internet. It is called the internet because it is a network of networks. LAN A connects to LAN B which Connects to LAN C, suddenly LAN A B and C are one big network. I made no statement about libertarianism or politics at all. I merely said that there is no commons. merely private networks of computers that voluntarily agree to exchange data with each other. Sort of like if the whole neighborhood agreed to carry letters to… Read more »

I did have a few Kirkland bourbons (quite good) so, although I do not think a wit of good will come of it I will point out that: You said I am a libertarian which there is no evidence for in my post. I tried to state facts. I am willing to listen and respond to any counter factual claims. You said I adhere to a suburban white boy ideology. Not relevant to anything. A suburban white boy can be as correct as anyone else. You said I am delusional and ridiculous. Seems to me conclusions without any evidence. It… Read more »

So let’s say our side wins the lawsuit and Twitter has to behave as stated. Who will pay to join the private club? not the users clamoring for elimination of badthink; they rarely put their money where their mouth is. I suppose at worst they wind up paying to be in their own little bubble, and a few of us pay to peer in the windows and watch their antics.